India’s New Caste War: The Archeology of a Perpetual Conflict

Abstract

Caste as a system of stratified inequality has globally survived in different forms since times immemorial. Its functionality on the subcontinent, however, is sustained by a mythologized social reality that runs contrary to the ideals of a secular democracy. This chapter seeks to examine caste as a conceptual anomaly and a source of perennial strife—ascribed status, discontent, and conflict—that partake of civilizational crisis at the crossroads of progress.

If the leper was removed from the world, and from the community of the Church visible, his existence was yet a constant manifestation of God, since it was a sign both of His anger and His grace…. Leprosy disappeared, the leper vanished, or almost, from memory; these strictures remained. Often, in these same places, the formulas of exclusion would be repeated, strangely similar two or three centuries later. Poor vagabonds, criminals, and “deranged minds” would take the part played by the leper, and we shall see what salvation was expected from this exclusion, for them and for those who excluded them as well. With an altogether new meaning and a very different culture, the forms would remain—essentially that major form of a rigorous division which is social exclusion but spiritual reintegration.

(Foucault, 1988: 6–7)

Mohan B., “India’s caste war: Archeology of a perpetual conflict,” Indian Journal of Social Work, special ed. by V. Rao and S. Waghmore, 2007, 68, 1: 24–33. Suryakant Waghmore’s assistance is deeply appreciated in getting the permission to reproduce this piece with certain additions.